What’s in my bag?

2331

July 29, 2017

When considering what to take with me on a 7-8 month trip around the world to vastly different climates with stretches of up to 14 days without a washer and dryer in at least three locations — was extremely difficult. I spent hours and hours pouring through a million blogs that told me what I needed and didn’t need. I desired to bring a “big” backpack and also be fashionable. I also looked through website after website of travel clothes to determine what I could buy. But then a few pieces of advice throughout my searching stuck out to me:

Pack light
Bring what you normally wear everyday
Consider cultural norms and weather
What’s the longest you’ll have to go without washing, pack that amount of underwear

And so I let that philosophy guide my packing. I ended up waiting until the night before leaving for San Francisco to pack everything. I packed and repacked about five times, taking things out and putting things in. I finally ended up with a backpack that looked like this. All my belonging I was bringing with me for 6 to 8 months into this [dogs not included].

I had the pleasure of wearing what I packed for two weeks in SF before taking off to our first destination: Thailand.

I quickly learned I had brought too much with me. I took out three tops and bought a white cardigan. I replaced a bulky top with a lighter one. I also took out a belt and a few other objects after arriving in SF. I’ll likely remove more before taking off because I’m almost certain I’ve packed too much.

For example (and probably because it’s cold) I spent the entire SF trip wearing only two bottoms and one skort (which I LOVE). I did not get around to wearing all of my shirts — however I did wash my clothes after one week of wear. Here’s a picture of everything I packed and the list of everything I’m bringing is below:

I used Eagle Creek Packing cube for my tops and bottoms. They have compression technology and I used a total of 3. My undies are in the Eagle Creek Compression packing cube pictured above.

What do you think of my packing list? Too much? Too little? Have you taken a long trip? What did you bring?

My list of everything below:

Tops:

1 spaghetti strap top
7 regular tops for various events
1 Exofficio Wanderlux Reversible top
1 Patagonia long sleeve blouse

Bottoms:

1 Patagonia bottom (quick Dry)
1 Jean
1 black jeggings from Macy
1 maxi summer dress
1 green shorter dress with pockets
1 black skort from Skirt Sports
1 long maxi gray skirt, convertible to a dress

Outerwear and layers

10 pairs of underwear including 3 pairs of THINX period underwear/ 3 pairs of exofficio underwear (quick dry)
1 sports bra, one convertible strapless bra, 1 bra
1 inspect shield Exofficio hoodie
1 scarf
1 very light long cardigan for modesty and warmth
1 swimsuit
1 smartwool merino wool PJ bottom/ 1 long sleeve PJ top that can also double as an outer or under layer for warmth
2 Columbia Omni-Wick Advanced Evaporation black tank tops

Accessories and toiletries:

Red belt to dress up the maxi shirt
1 jewelry organizer for costume jewelry (hubby and I bought cheap wedding rings [under $10 dollars each] to take with us)
1 blue sarong

Shoes:

I wear size 11 shoes so it makes it difficult to find comfortable and affordable shoes. I did find comfortable shoes and wanted to share them with you. Here’s a link to an article about shoes.

1 pair of My joy Ballet Flats
1 pair of aetrex sandles Janey Braided Slide.
1 pair of UQ Cloud running shoes with inserts

Toiletries:

I need a certain kind of lotion for dry skin and spray for my protective hairstyle so I decided to bring as much lotion as possible, especially since I’ve been informed that in some parts of Asia and some countries in South America lotion can come with bleaching cream.